An Inner-Loop Controller Guaranteeing Robust Transient Performance for Uncertain MIMO Nonlinear Systems

An output-feedback controller has been recently proposed that has the following features: 1) it is an inner-loop controller so that it can be added on the existing closed-loop system working in harmony with a pre-designed (possibly non-robust) outer-loop controller; 2) it robustifies the closed-loop system in a way that the uncertain plant under external disturbance behaves like a disturbance-free nominal plant; and 3) it recovers the trajectory of the nominal closed-loop system in time domain. However, it is restricted to the single-input-single-output nonlinear systems. In this technical note, we extend this result for a class of multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems having the same number of inputs and outputs. The tools used in this synthesis are the singular perturbation theory and the multi-variable circle criterion. An example shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.